if you know anything about the wooden village, let me know as the majority of info available on the intertubes is, as i mentioned, written in farsi. there’s an iranian website dedicated to the village here but it seems to have been left for dead here (thanks rick). if you fancy looking for any info about the village yourself, here’s a hint - neyshabur (the city in which the woden village can be found) also seems to be known by the following names: neyshaboor, neyshabour, nishapur and, in persian, نیشابور.

anyway, have a look at these and tell me you’re not impressed…

the wooden mosque

sources, clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

the wooden library

sources: top / bottom

the wooden houses

sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3, 4

miscellaneous (all photos from here)

also, check out the photos’ source links for a limited amount of extra info.

stavanger, norway, 1998

sources: top / bottom

liverpool, england, 2005

sources: top / bottom 2

cuxhaven, germany, 1997

source

well, that’s if your local beach happens to be crosby beach in liverpool, a place which is now home to 100 of these 6ft+ iron men, scattered over a 2 mile stretch of sand and reaching out nearly a mile from the shore. this spooky crowd, previously installed on other beaches around europe but on a temporary basis, is called ‘another place’ and was created by antony gormley, the english sculptor also responsible for the angel of the north. following some controversy a couple of years ago the iron men are now set to stay on crosby beach for good, continuing to make nearby sunbathers feel uneasy.

while not as immediately frightening as the baby tower, there’s something brilliantly creepy about ‘another place’, a piece of art whose existence on crosby beach goes to prove there are some decision-makers who actually possess some taste.

check out the sculptor’s website for more similar work.

source

the plane in the picture above, seen here at nasa’s dryden flight research centre in california, is called the shuttle carrier aircraft and as you may have guessed is used to carry space shuttles (piggy-back style) should they land at this base. i mention this purely to give some sense of scale as the number 270 next to it is part of the largest compass rose on earth.

this one…

the compass has been painted on the bed of an enormous dry lake next to the research centre and measures a whopping 1.21km in diameter. according to wikipedia, ‘it is inclined to magnetic north (around 13 degrees east of true north) and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators’. next to the compass, also painted on the bed of the lake, are some of the longest runways on earth. you can see a couple of them in the next photo.

the size of this thing is amazing. check it out on google maps here - you can still make out the compass rose from quite a distance. also check out this page on flickr. a guy who works at the base has added some interesting notes to an aerial shot of the area.

just came across the left-hand photo on flickr by chance and was immediately confused and intrigued.

to be found in berlin, it’s actually a faithful recreation of one corner of karl schinkel’s bauakademie (building academy), the building which used to stand in the same spot before being damaged during the war and subsequently demolished in 1962 to make way for the ministry of foreign affairs. needless to say, that building has also since been demolished.

due to the importance of the original bauakademie (both culturally and architecturally) there are now, apparently, plans underway to rebuild the entire structure as close to the original as possible. what i’m not sure of is why the single corner that was built (before being surrounded by the shell covered scaffolding you see below) a few years back. according to some dodgy translations via google i get the impression that it was built as a restoration exercise, both to teach students about restoration itself and to show the public how faithful the rebuild could be.

either way, it’s a great monument that makes for a strange photo.

photo source

:: bauakademie on wikipedia

:: association for the promotion of karl friedrich schinkel’s academy of architecture

needless to say, i started looking into it, and the fascination was warranted. from the looks of it there’s some kind of race on between wineries across the globe to seek out super-architects willing to design their ultra-funky wine production facility. here are some of the best i’ve come across.

note: just for the record, i am completely uneducated when it comes to wine itself. to prove it, i like my white wine medium-sweet and my red wine topped up with coke and ice (i believe it’s called a calimocho). i can think of no reasonable defence.

1. dominus winery, napa valley, u.s.a. :: website

architect - herzog & de meuron

photo source

photo source left, photo source right

photo source

2. bodegas ysios, rioja, spain :: website

architect - santiago calatrava valls

photo source top, photo source bottom

photo source left, photo source right

3. peregrine winery, queenstown, new zealand :: website

architect - chris kelly

photo source

photo source left, photo source right

4. cantina petra, suvereto, italy :: website

architect - mario botta

photo source

photo source top, photo source bottom

5. bodegas lópez de heredia viña todonia, rioja, spain :: website

pavillion architect - zaha hadid

photo source

photo source left, photo source right

6. weingut leo hillinger, jois, austria :: website

architect - gerner°gerner plus

all photos’ source

7. mission hill family estate, westbank, british columbia :: website

architect - olson sundberg kundig allen

photo source

photos’ source

photo source

so that’s just 8 of the many superbly designed wineries on earth. special mention must quickly go to frank gehry’s recent addition to the marques de riscal winery in spain. he was commissioned to design a hotel to compliment the winery, the extravagant results of which can be seen in the video below.

i’ve included a link below to the book on amazon in case you were curious. it’s fascinating.

wine by design: the space of wine (interior angles)

(follow the photo source links for larger pictures)

photo sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3

[above] welcome to ronda (google maps here), a beautiful city in southern spain which is split in two by el tajo gorge. as a result, certain buildings have been perched on the edge of the gorge’s verticall walls, enormous cliffs bridged by the 200 year old peunte neuvo. now, although living on the edge of that gigantic 130m crack would give me the shakes, i’d much rather live there than bonifacio…

photo sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3

[above] this is bonifacio in corsica (google maps here). this fragile looking citadel sits precariously above limestone cliffs which over the years have been battered by the mediterranean sea, a process which is apparent by both the piles of eroded stone at the base and the overhang of the cliff walls. how long before the next building gets swallowed? no idea, but from the look of the first photo it can’t be long.

[update]

photo sources from top: 1, 2

(cheers to qfwfq78) the photos above are of a tiny town by the name of castellfollit de la roca in spain, an incredible looking stretch of houses that all seem to be resting on a single ridge of rock. wow.

[update 2]

photo sources, left to right: 1, 2

[above] many people have suggested the hanging houses (casas colgadas) in cuenca, spain. apparently a large part of the town used to consist of these amazing houses, clinging onto rocks, unfortunately now only a few remain. for more photos just search for ‘casas colgadas’ on flickr or click here.

anyone know of any more frightening clifftop towns?

after…

the chimney stacks of this heating plant in bagnolet, paris, were transformed over a period of 2 months in 2007 by trompe l’oeil specialist frederic garcia. the largest of the water drops are 1.1m in diameter and to ensure the accuracy required he was guided by an assistant at ground level using a walkie talkie.

the skill and patience needed to do something of this scale, successfully, is incredible. but then when you spend your life doing just that i suppose the practice goes some way towards easing the pressure. when i saw this photo a couple of weeks ago it instantly brought jean marie pierret to mind, a guy i could’ve sworn i wrote a post about last year (a post which seems to have slipped from this site entirely. if you can find it i’ll be impressed), and a guy who, along with the help of 8 mountain climbers, was responsible for decorating the enormous tignes dam in france with a gigantic and awesome picture of hercules…

if the sight of that painting doesn’t impress you, bear in mind that the dam’s wall measures 181m in height, that’s taller than the blackpool tower (never thought i’d use that structure as a comparison).

pierret was also responsible for painting one of the cooling towers at cruas power station, france in 1991.

pierret was helped by 9 people (one of whom i think was frederic gracia) to paint ‘aquarius’ on the tower, a feat which required 4′000 litres of acrylic paint.

oh, just out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the following advert was actually painted onto the hoover dam? i suspect not but there’s an outside chance.

sources: 1, 2

the enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below.

due to both the immense size of taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through 4 floors of the skyscraper. it can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.

image sources: 1, 2, 3

image source: wikipedia

now for an incredible video. on may 12th, as the horrendous earthquake occurred in china’s sichuan province, tremors were felt for miles, including in taipei 101. youtube user phuaalvin was in the building at the time and said that as the building started to shake, dozens of people ran to the damper to watch it in action. here’s the video he took…

sources: 1, 2

all other treehouses now pale into insignificance.

i received this picture from a reader a couple of weeks ago, along with the next 2, and couldn’t tear my eyes away for what seemed like hours.

after a quick bout of googling i discovered the origin of the larger photo: it was taken by darius kinsey, a guy i’d previously been unaware of, who was a ‘prolific photographer of logging activities in the pacific northwest’. this particular photograph shows a cedar stump house in edgecomb, washington, dates back to 1901 and has instantly become one of my favourites. the other 2 photos, i’m still not sure of - if anyone knows of a source to be credited, please let me know. i’m guessing the clearer photo is also by kinsey.

anyway, this got me wondering about other hollowed-tree residences and after much hopping i eventually came across tunneltree.com, a brilliant site rammed full of old photographs depicting exactly that and more. to cut a long and boring story short: the site’s now offline. hopefully it’s temporary. unfortunately i only saved a few of the pictures from the site and none of the info. i’m just gonna post the pictures below and hope the site comes back online, at which point i’ll update this post. in the meantime, if you happen to know anything relating to the pictures feel free to spout it in the comments section.

(below) as you may have guessed, the interior of the enormous tree on the left has been hollowed to hold a shop, as seen on the right, with a “ceiling 50′ high”.

(below) obviously not residences but a couple of incredible ‘drive-thru trees’.

just when you think you’ve seen every type of bridge possible.

this is the sky bridge in langkawi, malaysia, a stunning cable-stayed bridge which actually curves around the single support column from which it’s suspended, 687 metres above sea level. completed in october 2004, the structure relies on an 87 metre high support column to hold the weight of the deck, this weight distributed through 8 load balancing cables attached to its head.

whilst the upsides are incredible views and a testament to engineering brilliance, the downside for gephyrophobiacs is that you’re seemingly placing all your trust in a single, relatively thin lattice tower which also happens to be standing at an angle. of course this is essential for the bridge to stay upright (a quality i always look for in a bridge) but visually it couldn’t be more frightening.

all in all, a unique feat of engineering.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4